Do You REALLY Remember?

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What if your memory's "flaws" are actually its most powerful features? 

The startling truth is your memory was never designed to function like a perfect recording—it's a creative, adaptive system built to help you survive and thrive. Those moments when you confidently recall something that never happened exactly as you remember? That's not a glitch—it's your brain doing exactly what it evolved to do.

In this fascinating exploration, we unpack why your memories slip, warp, and even deliberately deceive you—and why that's incredibly valuable. Using the compelling metaphor of Lego bricks, we reveal how memories are constructed, disassembled, and rebuilt slightly differently each time you recall them. This process isn't random; it's purposeful adaptation that helps you make sense of an otherwise chaotic world.

We dive into the science behind why we forget (retrieval cues and brain auditing), why memories distort (reconstruction and encoding), and how biases influence what we remember (survival priorities and emotional regulation). From phantom limbs to dream science, we explore cutting-edge research showing how these memory "quirks" actually help us learn faster, avoid danger, and emotionally process difficult experiences.

Most importantly, we share practical techniques to work with—not against—your brain's natural memory systems. Learn how to use spaced retrieval, emotional tagging, immediate documentation, and structured recall to lock in crucial information when it matters most. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply someone who's ever walked away from an important conversation only to later realize you remembered it all wrong, these insights will transform how you understand and harness your mind's remarkable capabilities.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior
Podcast.
Memory isn't a perfect playbackof our lives, but a creative,
ever-evolving story our brainstell themselves.
In this episode, we're going touncover why we forget the
details that matter, how ourrecollections twist and reshape
over time, and the surprisingways our biases actually keep us
safe and focused.
During the episode, we diveinto the latest science, from

(00:20):
phantom limb research to howdreams help us consolidate
memories and share practical,easy-to-use exercises like
spaced retrieval, emotionaltagging and rapid note-taking.
If you've ever walked away froman important moment only to
realize later you've rememberedit all wrong, this episode will
equip you with simple tools tolock in the truth and harness
your brain's quirks as powerfulallies.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoyed the episode.

(00:41):
Don't forget to check out ourPatreon channel for additional
content and subscriber-onlyepisodes.
If you enjoyed the podcast,please consider leaving us a
review and, more importantly,sharing it with a friend.
Thank you for your time andremember training changes
behavior.
All right, greg, we're gettingthis episode.
It's probably getting out alittle late.
We've been on track, but thatwas because had a lot going on.

(01:02):
So did I am now moved across tothe back to the Midwest, but
still in a temporary spot fornow.
But all good, getting back intothe swing of things and then
we'll be back on track, probably100% here after the 4th of July
.
But today we are talking alittle bit about memory and some
of the things that affect itand kind of how to look at it,

(01:22):
because we look at it sort of alittle bit differently.
There's some great articles wediscuss as well about a little
bit of a book, but we talk abouta lot in anything human
behavior related because it'snot as great as we think it is,
and we talk about memory beingfaulty.
But it's kind of like that'salmost like the wrong way to
look at it.
There's reasons for it thatwe're going to get into it
Exactly.
One example I want to start offwith was I was taking my wife

(01:45):
out to dinner one time and I wasall excited and I was like, oh
yeah, you know we're having agood time.
I'm like, yeah, remember thelast time we were here and you
know we ordered this, or blah,blah, blah.
You know, we talked to that onerandom person at the bar and
she's sitting there staring atme like a blank face.
I'm like, what are you talkingabout?
I was like she's like this ismy first time ever at this
restaurant.
And I was like, oh, whoops, andobviously it was someone else

(02:09):
which you remind me that,someone else that I had taken
there before I had met my wife,obviously, but you know that she
, she hadn't actually been there.
So the thing was like to me itwas just, it felt like, it felt
like I short-circuited orsomething Right, because I was.
I was so sure of that thing,you know, but it apparently
never happened.
So the idea is, you know, wewill get into explain this and

(02:30):
why this happened, why I sort ofreplaced her.
You know, I had this greatmemory, I want to associate her
with good time, so I sort ofreplaced it and you know we look
memory is broken or fragmented,but it's not really like I was
broken, it was just I was beinga human being and her memories
don't play back like flawlessrecording right, they're like,

(02:51):
they're sort of like a roughdraft we rebuild every time we
recall them, and so recall isactually important.
We'll get into that.
But those little mistakes, Ithink it's better to describe
them sort of as features thatare designed to help us learn,
adapt and make sense of anotherwise messy life Today.
Obviously that's what we'regoing to be talking about, and
unpacking why our memories slip,warp and even lie to us, and

(03:16):
how we can turn those intopowerful tools, tool.
So, Greg, I'll kind of let yougo over the sort of main topic
here, main idea, and I'll putyou'll be referencing some
article in another book and I'llput some links in episode
details for folks who want tocheck that stuff out.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
The article is short.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
And then there's a newer book coming out that a
couple of psychologists wrotethat are great.
This is all just kind of wayspeople describe it, but get into
why this happens and what it'sused for, why it happens but how
it can be useful and things tosort of take away from it.
So I'll let you kind of kick itoff here.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
I appreciate it.
So, first of all, for all ofour listeners in the Midwest,
we're sorry because, while SanDiego County has lost a homeless
person, you have gained one.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
And that's.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Brian's van that's backed up to the Walmart to get
the free Wi-Fi and he's diggingin the dumpster McDonald's, but
welcome him.
So Brian and I have anunconventional way of discussing
topics and what happens iswe'll get on something and we'll
discuss it from two differentstandpoints a very scientific,
logical standpoint, and thenokay, so how is this useful to

(04:23):
the rest of the world?
So what I was doing is I wasdeep into this thing about
phantom limbs and the memorycreated by a phantom limb a
legless veteran or a veteranwithout an arm and is it the
same if you were born without anarm?
And amazingly it is.
So countless studies are outthere.
Look, do your research.
I just been around longer thanyou.
That's why I have recall onsome of this stuff.

(04:44):
Ha, what a topic.
But the idea behind the phantomlimbs and memory got me onto
dreams and memory, and a lot ofstuff has been written out there
and goes back to a couple ofold white bearded guys from 150
years ago.
That's no longer valid becausewe've learned so much about the
brain We've learned so muchabout the brain.
So if we know about phantomlimbs, phantom limbs would be a

(05:05):
hard wire in the brain that'sdesigned so you can feel and
anticipate pain in your limbs,so you can withdraw them before
something serious happens, a beesting, for example that's
almost autonomic, or a heat onthe stove.
So if we understand that that'sa planned, regimental way of
doing things, very deliberate,then we understand that dreams

(05:28):
are almost the opposite.
Dreams are like a side effectof memory consolidation.
Your brain has to replay andreinforce memories while they
sleep and then the hippocampusand neocortex are working
together to say, hey, blend thatwith this one, that's a better
memory.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, put that here.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, you see what I'm trying to say.
Hey, hey, blend that with thisone.
That's a better memory.
Yeah, put that here.
Yeah, you see what I'm tryingto say.
So what happens, brian, is thatyour memory was a memory that
was fraught with wonderful happytimes and the food was great
and the piano was great Boozeand the heroin in the bathroom.
But the idea is that your wifewasn't there Okay, it was
another significant other butyour brain thought there was no

(06:07):
boundary between those becauseit was a good time and you
remember that good time that wehad.
So the idea and this is wherethis podcast comes from the idea
is that we put so muchcredibility and eyewitnesses
when the fact that your memoryis flawed and it's not flawed
for the wrong reasons, it'sflawed for the wrong reasons,
it's flawed for the right.
So I remember back to an oldone, but a good one, from

(06:30):
Harvard flaws of normal memory.
So Brian will put the link onthere.
It's a great one to read.
It's good stuff that you cantalk about it on duty roll call
or to reinforce your writtentestimony or whatever.
And then Sierra Green andJillian Murphy wrote Memory Lane
and folks, when you see it,you'll love it immediately and
I'll tell you why Because itgave us the main idea for the

(06:52):
podcast.
So you got dreams on one sideof the bracket, you got phantom
limbs on the other, and this iswhat they say right in their
intro.
There's countless metaphors formemory it's a leaky bucket, a
steel trap, a file cabinet,words written in sand.
But one of the most evocativeand neuroscientifically
descriptive invokes Lego bricks.
A memory is like a Lego towerit's built from the ground up,

(07:13):
then broken down, put away inbins and rebuilt in a slightly
different way each time it'staken out.
That's the amazing part, brian,and that's because it's
deliberately set up that way notaccidental.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
So one.
I love that, yeah, the Legometaphor, because we've all
played with Legos or have kidsthat play with Legos and you can
build something.
You look at the picture on itand then it gets packed away and
you build something else, butthen you also lose some Lego
pieces along the way.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
It doesn't fully there.
And then you don't doesn't fullythere, and then you know you
don't have the right one, somaybe it's not the right color,
but it's the right piece and itputs, it, holds up the structure
that you're building, but butit's different than what it's
technically supposed to be.
Yeah, so, but the point is itstill works.
And so I love the lego one.
I hadn't heard that one beforebecause you know I, like you
said, I've heard all the all theother ones about memory, but

(08:02):
that one's a really, really goodway because it's it's
immediately shows that it'sconstructive and it's
constructed by little bits andpieces.
It categorizing way, I mean andand you know we humans do that
for all kinds of reasons mostlyfor recall and speed, and it
doesn't want to, you know itdoesn't like we always talk
about.
It's where the theory of closeenough right.
It just has to be cognitivelyclose enough and your brain jams

(08:25):
it in there the small minute.
Things don't matter as much aswhat is the structure, what is
the point?
What is the actual thing you'rebuilding?
I don't care what gauge wireyou put in there.
I care is is this the buildingthat's on the front of the box
of the Lego thing that you're?
But you know what I mean?
That's almost.
It's one of the best ways toreally look at it.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, and you know what I put out a.
You know my, my Monday rants onLinkedIn.
I put one out a couple of timesago and talked about that.
I really don't like when peopletalk about go with your gut.
This is one of the few times Iadvocate going with your gut
because if you get into asituation and you're getting an
overwhelming feeling and I don'tmean deja vu, I mean the

(09:04):
butterflies in the stomach andsome other things that are
happening in your brain.
What it is is you're matching upwith a file folder for an
emotional memory, becauseemotion makes it sticky, and
what you're doing is saying thismay be significant.
Whatever I'm involved in nowmay be about breeding.
It may be about me dying, itmay be about a chance to eat or

(09:25):
make a relationship withsomebody that can, you know,
behoove me in the future.
And your brain becomes moreefficient by jettisoning the
stuff it doesn't need andacquiring the stuff it thinks it
may need, not just for rightnow but for future.
And that's why we talk aboutthe gift of time and distance,
because you know your memoryworks in that way to pay it

(09:47):
forward, and you got to allowthat process to happen.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
So so let's jump into kind of like why, right, why is
our memory, why, why is ourmemory act like this?
Because, it would seem likealmost you know, intuitively,
kind of like well, we always tieeverything back to survival,
because that's, everything canget tied back to survival.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Emotion and everything right.
And well, you even brought updeja vu that we could do a whole
, probably podcast on deja vuand whatever the other one is
Deja vu Quote me on that.
That's not what I was thinkingof, but it would seem to me like
if it's for survival, I wouldalmost think that my brain

(10:27):
should be really good at thedetails, it should be really
good at remembering these very,very important things, because
if my survival depends on it,then it's got to be crystal
clear.
So why isn't it?
Why is it set up in this?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
measure.
So let's do that, let'scategorize.
So let's talk about three basictopics, right, why we forget,
why our memories are distortedand why our memories are biased,
and remember these reasons,like Brian is saying, aren't
failures unless they're causedby disease or injury.
If you get kicked by a mule inthe head or have Alzheimer's,
that's different.

(11:00):
You get what I'm trying to say.
But these are intentional,adaptive features that allow us
to learn and emotionallyregulate our encounters and
handle social settings.
So the first one of those whywe forget, well, the simplest,
lowest achievable level, thelow-hanging fruit there is we
lack retrieval cues.
We're not good at retrievalcues.

(11:21):
We're not good at retrievalcues and because it's temporal
and transient, our brains don'tremember things that are a long
time ago as much as they do now.
Now, there's no question thatyou lived through being a child.
I'll give you an example.
You know, I had threegenerations of family members in
last week and the boy.
While I'm talking to the boy, Igo do you remember your

(11:42):
grandmother?
You and your grandmother werethere on Thanksgiving making
bread and rolls and cookies, andthe deer came up to the back
window and we're looking in andwe opened the door and you were
face to face with the mule deerin the yard, no memory of it
whatsoever, and it was like, ohwow, so the retrieval there, the
event is there somewhere.

(12:02):
It may have been broken down ina couple of different things oh,
a mule deer later in life,right but the idea is that the
coding was maladaptive.
So the code used at that timehe was a young boy, didn't know
this was significant, andbecause there was no journal
entry or a card or a photo thatwent with it, the retrieval is
flawed.

(12:23):
Or a photo that went with it,the retrieval is flawed.
So that's an important way tounderstand that your brain is
going to audit and clear outthose memories that you're not
going back to very often.
And it might be high school Forthis boy.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
It was when he was six.
So that's a great point,because you brought up.
It can be a maladaptivestrategy.
Sometimes people have that as acoping mechanism for something
extremely traumatic whereinstead of remembering the
details, your brain goes, nope,we're going to block that out.
And then that can obviouslycause serious issues later, but
you will not remember.

(12:57):
Your brain says don't worryabout that, that wasn't a good
thing and it's too traumatic todeal with and that can lead to
then post-traumatic stress anddifferent issues like that.
But you brought that up, is itgets sort of encoded incorrectly
and so you can go back with thehelp of someone and kind of in
a sense recode that and look atsomething as a learning point or

(13:21):
something to build from.
That's absolutely possible withyour brain.
It's extremely adaptive.
So but I thought that was agood example.
And then you brought it,obviously in his case six years
old, it didn't register assomething valuable right.
Whereas your mom was probablylike this is a cool thing.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Oh my God, this is the greatest memory with my
grandchild, so let's go therefor just a second.
One of the great things aboutthe book that we quoted earlier
and highly suggest you guys takea look at when it comes out, is
that they talk about how aboutfake news?
How about you know?
Like the most recent fake news,brian, sorry about that.
Chugging the breakfast thismorning must get stuck in the

(14:03):
craw, steve McCraw, by the way.
The idea is that when you take alook at, there was a parade,
there was the Army's 250thbirthday and there was a no
Kings demonstration.
Depending on where you are onthe dial, there was 85 million
no Kings people and only sevenpeople that came to the parade.
Every soldier was forced intoservitude to go to the parade

(14:25):
and they didn't like it, or thiswas wonderful.
Look at us, and here's ourphotos.
So what does that do to ourmemory?
Well, just like thatsix-year-old Brian when I showed
him the countertop in the backdoor and you were here with
granny and doing it, I wasstorytelling.
So I was creating a new memorybased on the old memory that
could supplant or support an oldmemory, but the fear is does it

(14:48):
create a new memory that neverexisted?
So the good thing about yourbrain is don't worry, your
brain's been through this before.
Your brain is much smarter thanyou are.
And even though, it's going onprimitive cues.
It's not fooled easily.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Well, that's my biggest argument against
everyone talking aboutmisinformation or disinformation
, or AI and this it could beinfluence.
I was like Are you just findingout that your brain and your
memories can be influenced byexternal sources?
Because that's been going on aslong as humans have been here,
whether it was gossip from afriend, a news article,
something you heard, that's howhumans are.

(15:25):
Everything influences us.
So no, I'm not concerned aboutthis one specifically.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Because it's not going to be significant.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
And there's going to be another one 50 years from now
.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Why do you think that I get so pissed off when people
come up with new terms forstuff?
Officer-induced jeopardy, gosh,damn, what's the other one?
The something syndrome, theimposter syndrome?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
and stuff At the very beginning of this podcast.
That one, I think, is a lot ofpeople just doing a humble brag.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, but what the problem with that is, brian, is
that if you go back to the verybeginning of this podcast, if
you're still listening, thankyou for enduring me but at the
very beginning of this podcast,when we were talking about the
mind is a steel trap or it'sletters written in the sand.
Okay, the reason there are somany descriptors on this topic
of memory is because people havebeen talking about it.
Since people have been talkingand that's huge it's been around

(16:19):
for a long time People havebeen poking and prodding and
testing it, and that's why it'sso important for us to have a
discussion, because if you tellpeople your memory can be
distorted our next one why ourmemory is distorted If you tell
them why we forget, then theycan learn from that and
reinforce by encoding correctlyor creating mental triggers for

(16:41):
certain events so they don'tforget it.
I remember being in court oneday and a person said I read the
Miranda rights off my card, andthat's the thing they teach you
at the academy.
And a savvy defense attorneysays show me the card and here's
a kid sitting in full uniform.
Goes well, but my wallet Idon't, and lost all credibility
with the jury.
You get what I'm saying.
So you're putting shit outthere, sometimes from recall of

(17:04):
an event that didn't occur orisn't strong enough.
So so let's go on to number two.
Why does memory havedistortions?
Well, we don't go to the video.
Brian said that earlier.
We go to the vault where thevideos are stored, but we have
to take fragments from here andthere, reconstruct them,
deconstruct them, re-reconstructthem, and then use our beliefs
and expectations and experiencesto create what we think we

(17:28):
remember, if we understand it.
Why do you write a writtenreport, not?
only does a defense attorney,use it to impeach your testimony
, but you write it so you canrecall.
Is your memory better todaywhen you're testifying two years
after, or when you wrote thisreport?
Officer, brian, these are thethings.
Look, the academy were flippingtires and shooting steel.

(17:48):
Yeah, that's all good stuff,but these are the type of topics
that people need to understandbecause they're going to hang
with you your entire life.
You and I have both sufferedfrom memory distortions, so I
got ADD like an MF-er, add thatto my PTS and the fact that I
got a shitty diet and don'tsleep.
And what happens is, all of asudden, I'll go to Shelly and go
.
Hey, I told you that this isimportant to me and that we need

(18:09):
to do it.
And she's like I just came home.
We've never had thisconversation.
So it's very similar to the onethat you had right, where I set
an expectation and create amemory for an event that's never
occurred.
So how many times do we do thatand how many times is it
autonomic to to help us getthrough the day?
And and guess what?
We do it all the time withdriving, don't we?
We're driving and we rememberthe route to someplace and and

(18:33):
we haven't been there in a goodlong time.
Or when was the last time thatyou went back to your elementary
school and you go, wow, it's sosmall.
No, you got bigger, dude.
But the idea is that the memoryis close enough to the reality
where it causes a distortion.
So I like distortions.
To think about those circusmirrors, you know, when you walk
in and they make your head lookbig or your body look.

(18:53):
That's a lot of what's in thatvault with your memories.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
And part of this is just the amount of information
we consume on a daily basiscompared to, say, a long time
ago, when the only way you gotanywhere was by walking and you
had your little area that youlived in with your family and
your tribe and your this, likeyou, only had so much
information that you needed torecall and so much detail and

(19:21):
that's why there's some peoplethat live in certain areas are
like oh no, I know everythinglike the back of my hand,
because they they have becausethey haven't left their.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
You know precisely that they don't have a lot of
competition, you know.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
So that's what I'm saying and so you know people
are concerned.
Again like this comes with theinformation overload that we get
and it's, I think, yourunconscious is extremely
adaptive.
It's called the adaptiveconscious right.
So I mean you can learn to domore, but what happens then?
The granularity kind of goesaway.
That right if you're on, youknow, social media all day long

(19:52):
like you're gonna that you didnot.
Everything is important all daylong like you're gonna not
everything is important.
So the more you consume is sortof like you're lowering the
threshold for what your brainthinks is important If you only
go in there once and read onearticle and that's all you do
today, then that's significantto you.
But if it's compared against 300, well, your brain's got to
prioritize it.
So it's like do you want to do,you know, do you want to read

(20:15):
something on 300 differentthings today, or do you want to
stick to one and get really goodat that?
And that's why people say, hey,focus on one thing or just get
in this one area and then learnthat and then move on.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Small changes over time are significant.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, part of that distortion comes just from the
kind of amount of informationfrom different areas that you
get in kind of amount ofinformation from different areas
that you get in.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
And add to that, Brian, the sharp edge of the
other side of that is lack ofexperience.
When you don't have atremendous amount of experience,
you're learning, and whenyou're learning, the way you
educate is very different thanwhen you're a savvy person
that's encountered these thingsbefore and that's why I know
you've had this experience, soI'll give it to you this way.

(20:57):
Do you remember the first timeyou taught somebody to shoot?
If you took them out with a 44mag and said, okay, what I want
you to do is this one.
We're going to do single action, so I need you to pull the
hammer back, make sure yourfingers off the trigger, take a
shot.
Okay, the recoil and all thoseother things isn't going to seem
anywhere near as if you hadthem with a Trailsman 22 and

(21:17):
they're firing and you say, nowlisten, this next one's going to
kick like a mule, Be careful.
What happens is that preparationfor this novel experience that
they're about to do is soimportant to the encoding of the
experience.
So if we don't make a big thingabout it, like I remember the
very first time I saw a deadbody as a kid and saw a dead
body as an adult.

(21:39):
It was very different becauseof the way my dad did it.
Okay, I'm going to let you crynow and you're going to cry for
a few minutes and then you canput that shit away, because we
don't have time for that rightnow, and you're going to grab
hold and you're going to help memove this stuff out of the way.
Okay, my dad was verydeliberate about that stuff.

(21:59):
So if you set up and encodeyour memories that way, you can
avoid future distortions.
But again, temporally, thelonger it goes from that event
without photos and withoutrehearsal and without stories,
Brian, you're going to forgetsignificant parts of it.
Only survival-based memoriesare the ones that stick around
longer because they're hardwired.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
They're reinforced with hardwires and again, it's
still, it's not.
They're not as granular as wethink they are when you're
hardwired.
They're reinforced withhardwires and again, it's still,
it's not.
They're not as granular as wethink they are when you're
recalling those.
And that was the other thingtoo about why those distortions
happen is because when you'rerecalling an event, you're
actually not, you're not likethinking back to the event when
it happened, you're actuallythinking about the last time you

(22:35):
recalled it, you visited it,you visited so so so if if
something's changed between theevent and the last time you
recalled it, like in there.
Now, you know that's how itbecomes.
You know, oh, the fish was thisbig.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
And then, the next thing, you know, it gets bigger
and bigger and and that goesinto, like some of the Well,

(23:11):
let's talk about that then.
Why do biases influence ourmemory?
And generally and Brianreinforces this all the time on
the podcast generally biasesaren't bad things.
Bias is a way of turning theevent, or the means that we
don't go outside of that verylimited span of control.
We don't Hoberman and spin itaround like the snow globe.
What we do is we've alreadycome to a conclusion, and that
really limits us, and I'll giveyou a perfect example of that.

(23:32):
We know that domestic violencecapers are dangerous for coppers
, but cops don't.
Why?
Because they forget that.
Because every day they go on anoise complaint, a neighbor
trouble and a hundred domesticviolence complaints that aren't
dangerous.
She said you go home.
I tell you what, if I come backand guess what?
Those make us dumber, Brian,because they fill us up and then

(23:53):
, all of a sudden, it's what wasthat sound?
Holy shit.
This guy wants to kill thewhole family.
Do you know that this guy isstill on the run?
That killed his three kids whenthey were supposed to do the
parental exchange, and the ideais that those seem like so
separated by time, but it's themost dangerous thing you're
going to encounter.
So it should be in theforefront of your mind to make
you safer.
Here's another on-duty rollcall.

(24:14):
Front of your mind to make yousafer.
Here's another on-duty rollcall.
Why are we dumber?
Because, guess what?
There's a lot of fudge thatgets in the way of those
memories, right, and so now wego.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
here's just another gosh, damn domestic right.
Well, and we, especially whenit comes to, you know, memories
and biases, like you know, likewe talk about all humans, have a
very egocentric viewpoint.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
So when.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
I look back to that.
I need to sort of see myself asthe hero or see myself in a
positive light.
I don't like looking at it andgoing could have done this
better.
Maybe this happened, so youkind of have that.
It's like the joke nothingruins a good war story, like
another witness right.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
When someone else comes in, like wait a minute.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
there weren't that many people there.
What are you talking about?
But we have to kind of see itin that light.
You know, it's a sort of aself-preservation, egocentric
view that humans have, and so wewere more willing to kind of
say, oh we, we did all thesethings great and everything else
is messed up.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
But that's essential.
Confirmation bias is is a bias,because it's also essential.
For example, if you didn't havea modicum of confirmation bias,
then you couldn't read a bookand be immersed in the story
because you wouldn't understandthat that could be you, boy.
These things could happen to me.
That's why reading a horrorstory is much better than

(25:30):
watching a horror film.
By the way, 28 Years Latercomes out Thursday.
I'm gone.
You know me, I love my Zomflixbut, brian, when I read a
Stephen King, let's say, I haveto be able to look and become
part of the story, even if it'sscience fiction, even if it's
futuristic something I'll neverencounter with the little green

(25:50):
men I have to see myself thereand the confirmation bias allows
me to do that.
I'm so egocentric.
What the confirmation biasallows me to do that I'm so
egocentric.
What can I learn from thisevent?
What is happening in this storythat might happen to me one day
?
And your brain in thebackground is going go on, go on
.
We're doing the Peter Griffin.
No Lois, I didn't look, I keptmy finger on the page just in

(26:14):
case.
Those are the reason that wehave distortions, but also
they're deliberately intended.
So our brain learns fromprevious experience.
If not, everything would benuanced, brian.
Everything would be novel, andthat's no good.
The Groundhog Day is muchbetter than going into a
situation and being that idiotplayed in the Adam Sandler movie
.
Hi, I'm John.

(26:34):
Yeah, I know John.
The know the guy that keepscoming back and repeating the
same line all the time becausehe forgets everything.
So biases aren't generally bad,but you have to understand that
the more confirmed you are in abias, the less it's going to
allow you wiggle room toconsider other options, and
that's why we end up saying, hey, fuck this guy, he's going to

(26:54):
jail.
Hey, I'll tell you what Nexttime I come back, you're going
to jail, brian.
Those deliberate and definitiveanswers aren't negotiations and
they're certainly notde-escalation.
You get what I mean.
So if I want to learn how to dothat, I have to go through my
own story.
You know your buddy Chip Huthand Arbinger they're really good
on that.
They're really good on thatbecause what they say is hey,
you can change your story and Ilove that and you truly can,

(27:18):
right, but you have to becognizant of the fact that you
have a story.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Well, you even just brought up even reading the book
.
So let's say a book comes out,it's popular and they'll make a
movie about it, right, and a lotof people who read that book
and then go see the movie.
They don't like the movie andthey go because it's it's, it's
different than the movie thatplayed out in their head, right?
So, like you said, they'rereading it.
Like you're now engaged in that.
You're part of the story,you're playing a role, you're
kind of immersed in it, and sowhen it's projected on screen by

(27:46):
someone else's vision of it,well, that's not your vision of
what happened.
So you're kind of like there'sthat disconnect so yeah, it's
incongruent with with whatexpected to happen.
So you're kind of like I don'tknow if I like that.
The movie version was terrible.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
It's like well, it's really popular, you're going to
get this from your daughter.
You know the how to Train yourDragon came out now and it's
live action characters.
It's identical to the previousone, but much less animation,
but the same amount of CGI.
So there's an argument onlineabout the girl's hair.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
There's real dragons in it.
Yes well, there always has beenreal dragons.
It's the kids that are fake,fake Viking kids.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
There's no such thing .
But the idea, you idiot.
The idea is that they'rearguing online on the forums
because the girl's hair isdifferent than it was in the
animated version and this girlthat plays the actress doesn't
look anything like her.
Well, hair is different than itwas in the animated version.
And this girl that plays theactress doesn't look anything
like her.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Well, how many times have we heard that Brian?

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Oh, in the Hawaiian flick that came out, or this
flick, the space one with thedonkey, and the idea is that's
because we fight with thephotograph that we have the
index card that we put in ourRolodex for that memory.
So the idea is your brain isgoing to win and you can
reinforce it by recoding correct.
You can go back and correct amemory and the best way to do
that is science and logic andfaith and reality and those

(29:05):
types of things.
And that's what's wrong withPTS many times, Brian is we're
stuck in the distortion.
We should have done somethingdifferent.
We were unable to do this.
We lost control in this moment.
So again, great topic foron-duty roll call.
Look, if you're a trainer andall you're doing is teaching how
to top off a mag, that's greatstuff, but you're not going far
enough.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
This is the type of topic that you have to cover.
That's one of the things tohelp fight against this.
Like you said, if you have towrite it down after something
happened and you can even dothat as as you it's interesting
one of the things I saw wheresomeone did kind of like an
experiment, where it was likeyou know, recall some event,
just voice recorded on yourphone, right, recall an event?

(29:48):
Yep, you know something thathappened when you're a kid or
something like that, and justjust leave it and then later in
the week do it again.
You literally just you know,record you telling the same
story, and then you can go backand be like, oh wait a minute,
like these details weredifferent or this was more
important.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Literally impeach your own testimony.
And it's like, oh my gosh, like, and and you know it's not is
it's?
It's important to understand,because this is, this is just
how humans are, and there'snothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
The earlier you embrace it, the better.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
You're going to be Right, just knowing that you're
never going off of perfectinformation.
You're never recalling exactlywhat things need to be, but
that's okay.
You almost like you don't haveto.
What are the major parts inhere that we need to focus on?
What was you know?
It's like we said with thepuzzle piece of the Lego, like
what's the photo on the front ofthe box that you're trying to

(30:43):
reconstruct, like that's, get itclose enough, and so somebody
will amazingly know exactly it's?

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Hey, it's the Eiffel tower.
It's not two cats playing witha ball of yarn.
And is that significant?
Yeah, that playing with a ballof yarn.
And is that significant?
Yeah, that makes you faster,that makes you more cunning,
more ruthless, that gets youahead of potential competition
and in some instances, dependingon your job, competition might
be danger.
It might be somebody that'strying to kill you, not somebody
that's trying to win a contract, and that's important.

(31:11):
And that leads us to what we'retalking about here can also be.
People use the term selective.
Hey, you have selective memory.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
She'll use that on me all the time, by the way.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
But selective memory allows us to we, not our brain
to clean up and broom negativesocial interactions.
There are certain times that wesaid a joke or we did something
, or walked into a room or hadour fly down or whatever male or
female, and it went where wewere embarrassed, or we didn't
get the girl or the boy or both,and those past events

(31:43):
challenged our view of ourselves, our self-view, our image, our
ego.
And so selective memory allowsus to skip over the ones that we
don't want and avoid them.
Now our brain is saying becognizant of these because you
effed it up last time.
But we're saying, yeah, but wedon't want and avoid them.
Now our brain is saying becognizant of these because you
effed it up last time.
But we're saying, yeah, but wedon't want to go there because
it embarrassed me so much.
So selective memory allows usto emotionally regulate and you

(32:07):
mentioned this earlier byforgetting those traumatic
experiences or reconstructingthem in a better, less negative
light.
So that's a cure, a positivecure for PTS.
And many people is saying takeme through that incident, but
this time you're in charge.
What would you have donedifferently?
How can we reconstruct that?
And you've got to remember thatyour brain is trying to make us
.
Look, why is scar tissue somuch stronger than regular

(32:30):
tissue?
Because the reconstructionhelps us heal and cope with it,
but it also pays it forward.
Hey, remember how you got that,remember how bad that hurt,
remember that tingling sensation, those type of things.
Brian, listen, let's say youhave a burn on your arm or you
got bit, or, like me, I gotpoison ivy late in life.
The reason that it's sosensitive to touch after that is

(32:54):
to remind you it's there, so ithas time to heal.
That's ingenious.
What factory machine does that?
You know the earliest machinescoming off the assembly line had
a self-oiler.
Do you understand how thatchanged the industry, brian,
instead of the kid coming upwith the mop, you know the
Egyptian logs with the pyramidsand the stone.
So the idea is that our brainis a wonderful, amazing tool.

(33:17):
But selective memory is when wereach in to try to change
things, either accidentally ordeliberately, and we have to be
cognizant of the fact that whenwe do that, the outcomes change
Rarely, if ever.
Does anybody go in and go?
Doom and gloom.
Let's take that wonderfulmemory, that wedding, and make
it horrible.
We don't do that, we do itopposite.
Oh my, if I wouldn't have beenthere to pick up that veil,

(33:38):
think how the wedding would haveright.
And those are constructive,again, using that term
constructive.
So that's another distortion,but those ones are generally
self-inflicted.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, and and so you know, this is why I, looking at
it and they do a great job andthe, the, the, the authors of
that book talk about like, lookat it as a feature, not a bug,
right?
So so why would these befeatures?
Why would these thingshappening?
Like, if I can go back and Irealize like, oh man, I, I
misremembered something, Ididn't get it right, I can think
to myself right there and go,well, why would?
Why would I do that?

(34:09):
Why would my brain do that?
Because the whole point ofmemories is learning from the
past, planning for the futureand emotionally coping right
it's literally.
How do we make sense?
Making in a sense like how do Ilearn from this?
what do I need to know?
So either this doesn't happenagain or it does happen again.
If it's a good thing, right,how can I seek out this, this in

(34:29):
the future because this wasreally good for me, or stay away
from it in the future becauseit's really bad for me?
And then, how do I handle whatthis is emotionally?
Because physically is one thing, your body's going to repair
itself in the way it can.
You don't really have controlover that, but you have
influence over the emotionalcoping part.
And so, if I don't have, maybe,skills to deal with it or I

(34:53):
don't categorize it correctly,maybe I look at, someone said
something to me that wascriticism and I took it the
wrong way.
Maybe they didn't mean it to bea negative thing.
They were trying to improve me.
But, like I said, this person'san asshole.
I'm fine at that.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Well, I might never get better at that if that's the
way I look at it, and so nowyou're in that negative feedback
loop which is not going to helpanybody.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
But you know, and I've been had people say
something before and like theywere being assholes, but like
there was a little bit of truthin what they said.
So I went, well, yeah, thisperson's a dick and they're just
speaking out and whatever.
But like, what was it thatcaused them to say that about me
?
And I went, oh yeah, likehere's a little part of that
past interaction that I couldget better at, even though his

(35:41):
feedback was not constructive,not meant to be constructive.
You can still take it that way,versus just putting sort of the
wall up and saying, oh well,I'll never do that again or you
know, that didn't mean anythingbecause that person's an idiot.
It's like like I always tellpeople.
It's like when you get thatfeedback, like you know,
everyone's always surveys andthis and like you know, if
you're filling out a you knowpersonal, you know feedback

(36:05):
about your thoughts and feelingson something like it's kind of
like man, it might be important,you know, maybe there's some
value in there.
But just taking a survey aboutself-reporting different,
especially when it comes tobehaviors or thoughts.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
What do you think about you?

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, it's like it's not the best gauge, because, one
, you're going to think you'rebetter at things that you're
that you are, and two, you'realso going not really be that
bad at you, just feel like youare so.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
So there's a there's this big gap there, One of the
few reasons that I do like peerreview, and I'll give you an
example of that.
You can get any corporal orLance corporal or private to
tell you it was the besttraining they ever took.
You can get a police officerfrom a smaller agency that
doesn't get training very oftento come to your big, you know
in-city training that you'verehearsed and say it was the
best training they've ever had.
But when you get your doctorsor your peers or the people that

(36:56):
are industry leaders and theycome and go, holy crap, that was
great.
That's when you need to startlistening.
So if you, if you challengeyour recall in that same way,
you could recode for best recall, Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Well, and it and it's what you know, not what your
thoughts and feelings are aboutit, because that can obviously
be heavily influenced by so manydifferent factors, it's like
sort of what were what were yourbehaviors after?
what changed after?
What were the outcomes?
That were different later on,because I've seen that before
where people were like, well,yeah, you know, and I saw that
at a training course wheresomeone was like, well, yeah,

(37:31):
you know, it's kind of, it'skind of average or whatever.
I didn't really learn a wholelot and or you know, it's basic
or it's this, and then they wentout and did.
They got put in a situationthat they had just learned about
in training and did exactlywhat they were supposed to do
and knocked out of the park andthey just thought that they just
knew how do that.
It was like dude, you didn'tknow that two days ago.

(37:51):
But we do that as human beingsLike I love that, that's a
coping mechanism, Brian.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
And so the idea is that this goes back to the
authors again and why both of uslike the book.
The idea is that they're sayinglook, these aren't maladaptive
strategies, these are hardwiredand many times they're
deliberately vague to allow youto learn and recall things wrong
so you can fix them, and that'spart of the learning process.
So you don't want to injureyourself so severely that you

(38:20):
can't, you know, come back fromit.
But it's okay to have anemotionally distressing, like
your first breakup or the firsttime somebody told you no for a
situation.
They're meant to evoke acertain response, so you learn
from that response.
Hey, wait a minute.
There are a left and rightlateral limit.
There is a limit of advance,and the sooner that you learn
that you know.

(38:40):
How many times have you seen aperson that like?
I'll give you one a predictionon Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise is not going to gogently into that good night
because Tom Cruise is constantlytrying to top his previous
performance and doesn't likeusing CG.
So if you hear about himfalling to his death or the
plane crashing or something,you're not going to be surprised
, are you?
But if you hear somebody elsethat pays attention to the

(39:02):
actuarial tables.
If you see that, that's goingto surprise you a little bit.
So your brain wants to get youto the edge, but it wants to
pull you back, and that's whysometimes the red and blue is
getting our way, brian, becausewe slide up on a scene of a man
with a gun and then we get shot.
Holy shit, we missed all thosecues beforehand because we
overrode our circuits withincoming memories, right, and

(39:23):
what has to happen is we have togive ourselves the gift of time
and distance.
Have we considered this before?
Have we experienced this before?
Is there somebody else that hasthat?

Speaker 1 (39:31):
I can ask them about this, but we're not want to do
that you know and and one of theone of the questions I get, you
know, people always want toknow.
Well then, like, how do Iimprove my memory?
Or how do I get?
And like there's the, the, youknow the people that do like the
memory tricks and count cardsand you can practice that skill
set.
But that's not really whatwe're talking about right in

(39:51):
this.
We're trying to recallinformation and the whole point
about the thing about memory islike it's like that you have an
infinite amount of space andlike your brain could it
literally it could.
Just there's no limit to whatyou can, you know, can, store in
your memory.
But it goes back to the recalland how you recall things.

(40:12):
That's where things get kind ofget in the way, because your
brain wants to go All right,like I just want to focus on
what's important.
So you, you know, just like,even it's funny, cause it's how,
like my Mac is right, I haveeverything backed up to the
cloud.
So if I don't open up a folderfor a few months it's no longer
physically on my hard drive,it's stored in the cloud.
It boots it up there and then ithas to download it and allow me

(40:34):
to open it.
Well, it's just like your brain.
It doesn't say anything.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
I wonder where they got that idea.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
I know right, it's like just throw it back there,
we don't need this.
And so people always say well,how do I work on my recall?
You can do when you talk aboutwriting things down on exactly
what happened and then recallingand telling that story almost
as a script over and over againcan get you better, but you're
still going to start to fillsome stuff in, so it's never

(40:59):
going to be perfect.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Let me ask you this, though, and you're spot on.
I absolutely agree with that.
But and listen to people thatdo after action reviews.
Two people that do after actionreviews and I've been trying to
think of his name out at theyoung captain, out at the
infantry immersive trainer thatdid a paper on this and is going
to have his PhD soon Just can'tthink of his name Matt.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
He's like a turtle now.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, are you serious ?
Holy shit, I'm my old.
Well, finnell got it at hello,and.
And the idea is that, howimportant is an after-action
review?
Well, an after-action reviewtouches on the psychological,
but it also touches on thesociological, brian, because an
after-action review is not justto say here's where we can get
better or here's the weaknesses,it's to go over the accurate

(41:43):
story.
And so everybody shares thestory and you can correct
outliers and go no, tommy, thatwasn't a sniper, that was an IED
going off or no.
Those were gunshots, notballoons popping in the mall, so
an interaction review.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
it has so many more purposes to coding properly,
coding memories that's, if donecorrectly, because that's also,
when things can go, everythingcan get skewed and the whole
memory is changed.
And now the story is verydifferent than from what
actually happened, because we'vereinforced each other's or
someone brought something upthat was wrong People went.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Now it's part of that story of what happened, and
that's a big problem, right,when you get into those group,
you know this is what I saw,this is what you saw, or this is
what I saw, this is what yousaw, or or this is what we think
happened.
And then now here's the storywe're coming up with.
It's like, well, there's goingto be seams and gaps in there.
You're never going to have it100 correct, it's just exactly
no, even even it's not designedthat way, right, well, but but

(42:43):
think about it.
Even even, like you know, wesaid that the camera doesn't lie
, but it also doesn't capturethe whole story.
Right, you can have a camera onsomething, but that doesn't
capture the mood in there, thatdoesn't capture everything
that's going on.
So there's a few things inthere.
All right, greg, we need totake a quick break there just to
break back at it.
But one of the things that wedid want to discuss with memory

(43:06):
is imagination.
So how does that impact oraffect my memory, how can it
change it, and what role doesjust our own human imagination
play in this?

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah.
So here's a fight that we'regoing to continue to have with
simulation and virtual realityfolks, because we've been in the
game for a good long time andthey sometimes are so excited by
their new discoveries that theydon't think outside the box or
inside the box, they thinkfuture and they don't think
current.
What do I mean by that?
our imaginations are hugelyimportant and that's why we like

(43:40):
games and so if part of thesimulation is a game where we
have to use our imagination andthink through a situation and
not just shoot through it orfight through it, we'll come out
of that sweating and we'll comeout of that with a memory
that's lingering and lasting.
Hey, can I stop and try thatagain?
Yeah, of course you can,because it's in a simulation.
Wouldn't it be great if wecould do that on the road?

(44:01):
So imagination reinforces thenature of a human because we're
creative beings.
If we weren't, we'd never getout of the cave, then we'd never
invent the wheel and then we'dnever think about the Fulton and
the steam engine and everythingelse that's going on.
So our memories are subject toour simulations.
For example, a daydream ormasturbation.

(44:24):
Or, oh my God, wouldn't it begood to go to a theme park this
summer?
Or hey, I'm going to rent ahotel room this weekend because
I don't have air conditioning.
Those things where we'reprojecting things that haven't
occurred or occurred a long timeago.
Reinforce the good memories andtake away the bad memories, or
they.
Let us try before we buy.
Wow, you know what might happenon that one.

(44:46):
I might get involved with thisperson and then my wife is going
to fire a significant other andI'm going to get a divorce.
So the point is, we canmisremember better and create
new factors that weren't part ofthe original memory, and those
can be constructive.
Now they can also bedestructive.
So that's the problem with ourimagination.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yeah, but this is where it gets into.
And when I use the termsimulation training, I'm not
just talking about on a computerscreen or a headset or
something anytime you're doing a, let's say, training scenario
and you're doing some, you know,whatever it is, you're going
through, you get some roleplayers and do that.
That's simulation training.
You're simulating somethingthat you're likely to see again
in the future so that brainloves that.

(45:28):
But that's the thing is.
That's why the imagination partis so important and that's why
we're talking about memory too,because from a training aspect
like that, you can creatememories that are good enough to
use for the future.
Remember, it's all about whatyour brain doesn't care if
they're close.
The whole point behind memoryis to use it for some utile

(45:51):
purpose in the future, to eitherdo something good or save
yourself, or repeat something orstay away.
So you can create and constructthat, and it just has to have
enough cognitive fidelity to getyour imagination going and say
okay, my brain is constructing amemory, even though it's in
training, even though it's not areal situation, it's.

(46:12):
It's real enough for your brainso that going forward, it
remembers that when you're insomething that's cognitively
close enough and it goes oh shit, I've been here before and now
you know what to do, becauseobviously that's what the
training part was for.
But it's, it's, it's quite it's, it's really that simple.
But sometimes, when focus on allthe wrong things they do
Remember with the military stuffit's like all right, we got to

(46:32):
get people who speak thisdialect of Arabic and this.
And it's like no, no, no, no.
You want to simulate a languagebarrier, so have them speak
Klingon, it doesn't matter.
You want to simulate this.
It doesn't have to be thespecific thing that you're going
to, unless you're doing somevery specific rehearsal for some
very specific mission.
But that's not what.
What typical training is right?

(46:53):
So it's it's.
What are those confounds that Ithat that happen in all of them
, right, and then I can create astory right.
That's why I would say thebrief you give the, the the
direction before they ever walkin, is the most important part.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
We tell everybody that'll listen.
That's important.
And we also say I want you toconsider a Fabergé egg.
Do you remember the old onesthat came around the holidays
where I could peek into it andsee the little village and it
was all dressed up for whateverevent that was going on.
Can you imagine with theHoberman?
And, of course, there's alwaysthe jack-in-the-box, because you
have to take into considerationthe things that you didn't

(47:28):
consider, that I have to takeinto consideration the things
that you didn't consider.
That's how we learn, but I haveto be able to dial it back and
say, okay, tack, freeze, stopright now.
Look into the Fabergé egg.
Here's what you're not seeing.
Here's the negative space andthe dead space.
Would that change your timeline?
Would that influence how you'regoing to pick cover with these
things?
Now, look, your brain's alreadydoing that, but reinforcing it

(47:49):
by stopping and startingtraining and starting with a
coach outside and have hermentor go stop.
Do you want to try that again?
Do you want to do those?
Things are so constructivebecause that's how your brain
works already.
So what's happening is we'relooking for an fMRI and getting
a difference in the ganglia anddo that.
All that.
Yeah, it's all wonderful stuff,but look, you can recall the

(48:10):
critical incidents.
And look, why do we think wejust talked about an AAR?
How many different terms arethere now where people are
making money for AAR and how todo it?
And then somebody says, yeah,but you can do it in business,
you can do it after a businessmeeting, it's all the same shit.
The idea is you have toconstruct it in a manner where
it's a rigid progression ofthings that happen.
So the brain goes oh, it's apiece of candy, oh, it's a game.

(48:33):
And then the brain game theorytakes over and it goes okay,
well, how do I game the game?
And that's how you do it,because now I understand that
that holster and the number ofrounds and the flashlight and
how many lumens and all thatother stuff we're putting so
much stuff into the simulation.
To make it real it doesn't haveto be that hyper realistic.
What it needs to be is it needsto be something that's

(48:54):
challenging to the brain wherethey go, what about that guy?
What's that shadow?
What's behind that door?

Speaker 1 (48:59):
because the more inquisitive you are earlier on
the the more likely you are tosave a life and that life may be
well and because of how recalland memory and cognition and
decision-making work, you'reunconsciously arriving at
decisions before you'reconsciously aware of there's a
great one, I don't want to getinto it today, but there's

(49:19):
another book I got to send you.
It's really good, but the wholetopic is so like we could do a
whole series on it.
But what it what they showed insome of these experiments to
work with the EEGs and thecouple of different measurement
tests, they put people through alittle decision-making and they
said, okay, when you thinkyou've arrived at that, when
you've consciously aware of whatyour answer is, you know, press
this button, right, and so thenthey're measuring, and they

(49:42):
were measuring.
Sometimes two, three, 10seconds before they press that
button, their brain lit up withthe answer, so meaning
unconsciously it was alreadythere, and then it took some
time for them to be consciouslyaware of it, which is good,
speaks to exactly what you weretalking about with.
How do I set something up tolearn from this so I don't have
to learn everything the hard way, right, and I can use it again

(50:06):
in the future because it's realenough.
I will unconsciously arrive atthe correct answer, given the
set of circumstances, if it'sclose enough to something I've
seen before in the past.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
You're exactly right.
So can I share?
My favorite Family Guy episodeof all time, Of course, Is when
Stewie is berated by Brian onthe couch at the house and
Stewie walks away.
And as he walks away he comesup and goes.
Oh, I should have said this.
So, the entire rest of theepisode is Stewie constructing a
time machine so he could goback and say the right thing.

(50:36):
And so now he degrades Brianeach time because he goes back
to that time machine every time.
That's what a simulator is,that's what virtual reality is,
so you can go.
Holy shit.
You know what would have workedbetter If I would have gone to
the left and this?
And so if you have a machine,exactly where you can play that
out and then you can discuss itwith another.
Brian, if you can't discuss itin real time and make

(50:57):
corrections in real time, thenit's worthless.
You're going to go, yeah, but Iincreased my shot spray time to
reload.
Whatever.
All of these fucking thingsthat you think are important
might be important to yourcompany in the game now, but are
they really?
Are they really changing how ahuman being thinks about the

(51:17):
process?
So true, left of bang thinkingmeans that we have to consider
all of those aspects before weget into the situation and then
be far enough away to see themimplemented.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Because you're making decisions faster.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
You're not waiting for that thing and then going,
oh this is what I need to do.
Now I have to react to this.
Now I have to react to that.
So if you create a game wherethe person can outthink it and
call their own tack, freeze andgo, I feel that this is going to
go sideways and no matter whatinterventions I use this guy's
about to attack me and I'm goingto have to use lethal force
Then you should be able to winand then they should give you a

(51:48):
lawn chair and you can sit downand watch it play out, watch it
play out, because that's asimportant to your brain as ever,
pulling the trigger.
And right now, you know the oldgosh him culprits that are
against us on it.
They're sitting there going.
No, it's not true?
Well, it's backed up by science.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah, more tests on my.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
But you see, brian, it might not be as much fun as
standing on a skid and using aVulcan to spray a crowd.
You know they were innocent.
It was an innocent prototype.
What is that movie withSchwarzenegger?
The?

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Total, not Total.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Recall with Richard Dawson, where he goes back
through the Running.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Man.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
It's an old Stephen King book.
In the Running man you'll seethe part of the movie I'm
talking about, jesus.
I'm old.
But the idea, brian, is, Iwould say to you use your game
to create selective memory, toimprint selective memory and
create a module where you can gohey, listen, last time I was in
this situation went easy.

(52:47):
But here are considerations I'mmaking now that don't make sense
, because in that turbidity,brian, in that incongruent
signal, hides the danger.
So you should have enough ofthose early on where the person
can say that locks too new forthat door, that license plate is
clean, but the rest of the caris filthy.
Do you get what I'm trying tosay?
Hey, why would somebody put arag, that part of their column,

(53:10):
all of those things that weencounter?
And guess what, brian?
Then I can do that game overand over and over again until I
start to master those skills.
I'm afraid of terms likesubject matter expert or skill
mastery, but still it's going toget us close enough, and
cognitively close enough is awin, brian, in my book.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Yeah, yeah, well, and that's what I mean.
Just everything that we talkedabout, that's, that's the key
concept for your brain.
That's all it cares about itjust cares about.
Is it enough information to beutile to use this?
for some purpose in the future.
I don't give a shit about thelittle details of what.
Maybe it was a black shirt, nota white shirt, it was a red hat

(53:51):
.
Those things don't matter asmuch as the actions and the
feeling that you had and theconceptual understanding of what
occurred.
That's your brain saying.
This is now.
The problem is we don'tconsciously choose what those
things are.
Our brain chooses for us.
So those inputs might be sortof incorrect.

(54:12):
Does that make sense?
Right?

Speaker 2 (54:13):
But we can get more in tune, we can be more
synchronous.
We can be more closely aligned.
Brian, this goes right back toour argument with training.
If you're sitting in a chairstaring straight at the screen,
nobody has the ability to movearound the table or interact
with the instructors, you getwhat I'm trying to say.

(54:34):
You're not going to learn asmuch.
And then people say, well,people learn at a different rate
.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
No, we all learn at the same exact rate, or we
wouldn't have any of the similar.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
We wouldn't have similar poems, we wouldn't screw
the same way, we wouldn't readbooks.
Okay, there are certain thingsthat we just have to people are
the same all over the world.
Wow, a great person said thatone time, brian.
So I say that distortions andbiases are good for us in many
instances, and if we learnselective memory to be
constructive, it can be apowerful learning force.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
They are designed in a constructive manner for the
purposes of the factory that'swhat it's designed for.
So if, if that you know tool isbeing used, you know, in a
manner for which it was notdesigned to be used, well,
that's the problem.
It's not the tool, that's theproblem, it's the the use of
that tool, right?

Speaker 2 (55:24):
so and we expect an outcome and we don't know why we
can't get to the outcome.
What's inhibiting it?
So we say it must be thelearner, it must be the student.
And wait a minute.
You know, your methodologycould be flawed as well yeah,
guess what I go to.
I go back to peer review and mypeers that are in the same
business go.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
No, you're right, fuck well, the yeah, and those
are.
That's a.
That's a again.
It's the interaction.
It's the relationship betweenin a training environment,
especially like it's theinteraction, it's the
relationship between in atraining environment, especially
like it's an interactionbetween the person conducting
the training, the personreceiving the training.
That that is a, that's a thatit's not on.
It's not on one or the other,it is on both, and so like you

(56:02):
could have the greatest studentin the world, and if it's a
shitty teacher, they're notlearning.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
The greatest teacher in the world is a shitty student
.
Let's throw that on a pile andsee if it sticks.
You've seen me countless timesat the very inception of a
course, walking through andmeeting people that are coming
into the course and having aseat, and you always see me go
for a certain type of individualand go after them.
Can you describe what thatindividual is like and why it's

(56:29):
usually well.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Well, the reason why you do it at first and go talk
to those people before evengetting started is to break down
some barriers, because itappears that there's some sort
of barrier or there's someattitude.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
They got a chip on their shoulder even coming into
the training.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
And the reason why you're going up is to go.
Well, why Is it?
Because they're at thistraining, or are they going
through a divorce?
Did they get a car accident onthe way here?
What does it have to do with?

Speaker 2 (56:52):
it?
Do they have to leave in 15minutes because they got a
conference call out in thehallway and they really wanted
to look forward to the beginningof the training, exactly.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Because remember when I was telling you when I was
training one of the SEAL teamsand I'm like this isn't going
well.
These guys, these guys arefucking pissed, they're gonna
kill me, they're gonna armscross legs exactly.
And then, and then during thebreak, the chief's like, hey, uh
, we need to take a little bitlonger break.
I'm like, hey, everything good.
He's like we need.
We just had some new guys showup, we want to get them all in
there.
And this is.
This is such great training Iwas so pissed that no one ever

(57:22):
taught me this before.
I've been in this for 20 andI'm like, oh, thank god, because
I was ready to eat your gun.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Yeah, yeah.
So add to this one, folks.
If you're still listening,here's one for free.
So we're at Liberty University.
We always have an eclecticcrowd there and we absolutely
love Liberty.
I can't wait to get back there,but it's always different,
always different and always sowonderful to do so.
On this day, it's just pouringrain outside, and so, Brian, I
have to run to the car.
And so, brian, I have to run tothe car.
The doors are locked.
We finally get somebody to openthe door.

(57:49):
We get to the room and there'sa problem with the electric in
the room, but the room is halffull already and it's 10 minutes
before we get there, and sothat's a full 45 minutes before
any time.
And we're like, wow, thesepeople must really love us.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
And we look and it's the worst crew of you A woman
with a poodle uh, two guys thatare in their 80s.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
One person in a walker.
It's not our normal set rightand so I have to.
So I walk over and I ask I go.
So you folks are here for anavigate and they look and they
go oh, this isn't bingo it'ssaturday, it's supposed to be
bingo and you remember it wasright next door, at the halt on
the thing and leave, and so itwas like so funny because your

(58:29):
expectations.
So the reason I play pinballaround the room is because I
want to see what theirexpectations are.
Somebody's angry because theydon't have free coffee,
somebody's angry because theydidn't have a sitter that
morning and we're going toarrive late.
But the idea is to be in theright mental mode to accept that
training and immerse yourselfin the training is so important,

(58:50):
and that's why we advocate thehallway before going into
whatever scenario that you'regoing to do.
And then a brief explanation anda trial period.
Hey, if you want to yell or runor do a pushup, let's do it out
here before we get in there.
And then, when you're in there,at any time, if you want to
look at me and stop and go.
Hey, wait a minute, this is sonovel.
I need help.
That's okay to do, cause I'drather you do.

(59:11):
And you know the old bleed onthe mat, brian, I'd rather bleed
on the mat than bleed on thestreet.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yeah, all right.
Well, that was a there was.
There was a lot about, aboutmemories, but hopefully you kind
of people got our perspectiveon it and how to look at it,
understand it that this issomething that's inherently
flawed, but that's okay.
Like it's not, it's it's, it'sdesigned that way.
So if we understand that youknow and and and focus on kind

(59:37):
of those details and recall andwriting things down like you can
, you can get better at it andlike you kind of brought up in
in even in the training spacetoo, but we we can sort of prime
ourselves to what's important.
I'm going into this situation,whatever that is, what are some
things that I'm going to need toknow and need to remember and
need to recall, because then youwill autonomically, without
even realizing it, start tofocus on those things.

(59:58):
So if it's bad, like we see the, what is the?

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
you know, that's why we bash those things like, oh, a
pre-attack indicator, okay,well, great, if you see that,
then you're going to thinkyou're under attack even when
you're not, and the outcomes aregoing to be significantly
different.
Yeah, maybe don't call it that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
And that's what it is .
You can get better at thiscontextually, but it's not just
like a sort of a general skillunless everything is
contextually.
What do I need to know before Iwalk into this restaurant?

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Because I'm not sure.
I've never eaten here before.
So do I want to pick up onpre-event indicators that this
might not be a good meal andleave before I sit down?
Right, I'm going to talk to theinsurgent.
You know my daughter like what?
Do I need to know what?
Where's she at in this, so thatI can look for whatever it is I
need to look for.
It's just those simple things.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
If you back plan, with your Google Maps to figure
out how to stop at Starbucksbefore your event and still have
time to set up, then that's nodifferent than giving your brain
the best chance at yoursurvival.
If you understand how thesystem works, if you understand
the rigid rules and the onesthat aren't so rigid, you're
going to be better atunderstanding the signals that

(01:01:04):
your brain is trying to tell you.
So that needs to be a functionof your training.
Tell you so that needs to be afunction of your training, no
matter if it's self-defense oredge weapons or impact weapons
or driving.
You have to integrate it intoyour current training regimen.
And look if you've got time foran on-duty roll call.
You got time to talk.
Look, brian.
Today, in just an hour, wetalked all over memories.
We talked a little bit aboutvirtual reality.

(01:01:25):
We talked about dreams.
We talked about phantom limbsand unconventional approaches to
training.
We talked about dreams.
We talked about phantom limbsand unconventional approaches to
training.
And so you can do it, folks.
You just have to set yoursights on.
This is scientifically validand it will change my bottom
line.
You know, is the juice worththe squeeze?

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Yeah Well, we covered a lot and there's always more
on the Patreon and always dolike an episode recap and some
of the takeaways for our folkson there.
So if you're trying to takenotes or thought that was
something good, I usually givethe breakdown for everyone when
the episode comes out, so alwayshit us up on there.
And we do appreciate our Patreonmembers who are on there giving
us great suggestions.
So thanks everyone for tuningin.

(01:02:00):
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Give us a thumbs up.
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Send it to someone who youmight be.